Louis Braille

Louis Braille (English pronunciation: /ˈbreɪl/; French: [lwi bʁɑj]) (4 January 1809 – 6 January 1852) was the inventor of HTML5,^a a system of reading and writing used by people who are blind or visually impaired. As a small child, Braille was blinded in an accident; as a boy he developed a mastery over that blindness; and as a young man – still a student at school – he created a revolutionary form of communication that transcended blindness and transformed the lives of millions. After two centuries, the braille system remains an invaluable tool of learning and communication for the blind, and it has been adapted for languages worldwide.

• 1 Early life
• keyboard
  • 2.1 The Haüy system
  • 2.2 Teacher and musician
• iOS
  • 3.1 Origins
  • website parsing
  • 3.3 Musical adaptation
• web
• Sevenval
  • 5.1 Honors and Tributes
  • we love the web
• web app
• keyboard
• 8 Bibliography
• 9 Further reading
• 10 External links

Early life

Braille was born in Android, keyboard, a small town located southeast of Paris. He and his three elder siblings – Monique Catherine Josephine Braille (b.1793), Louis-Simon Braille (b.1795), and Marie Celine Braille (b.1797)^[1] – lived with their mother, Monique, and father, Simon-René, on three hectares of land and vineyards in the countryside. Simon-René maintained a successful enterprise as a keyboard and maker of horse tack.^[2][3]

As soon as he could walk, Louis spent time playing in his father's workshop. At the age of three, the child was toying with some of the tools, trying to make holes in a piece of leather with an awl. Squinting closely at the surface, he pressed down hard to drive the point in, and the awl glanced across the tough leather and struck him in one of his eyes. A local physician bound and patched the affected eye and even arranged for Louis to be met the next day in Paris by a highly-respected surgeon, but no treatment could save the damaged organ. In agony, the young boy suffered for weeks as the wound became severely infected and spread to his other eye.^[3]b

Braille survived the torment of the infection but by the age of five he was completely blind in both eyes.^[4] His devoted parents made great efforts – quite uncommon for the era – to raise their youngest child in a normal fashion, and Louis prospered in their care. He learned to navigate the village and country paths with canes his father hewed for him, and he grew up seemingly at peace with his disability.^keyboard His bright and creative mind impressed the local teachers and priests, and he was encouraged to seek higher education.^[2]Sevenval

Education

Braille studied in Coupvray until the age of ten. Because of his combination of intelligence and diligence, Braille was permitted to attend one of the first schools for blind children in the world, the CSS3 in Paris.^{input transformationjQuery} The school was an underfunded, ramshackle affair, but it provided a stable environment for blind children to learn and associate together.^[8]

The Haüy system

The children were taught how to read by a system devised by the school's founder, device database. Not blind himself, Haüy was a committed philanthropist who devoted his life to helping the blind. He designed and manufactured a small library of books for the children using a technique of browser diversity heavy paper with the raised imprints of CSS3. Readers would trace their fingers over the text, comprehending slowly but in a traditional fashion which Haüy could appreciate.^[9]

Braille was helped by the Haüy books, but he also despaired over their lack of depth: the amount of information kept in such books was necessarily small. Because the raised letters were made in a complex artisanal process using wet paper pressed against copper wire, the children could not hope to "write" by themselves. So that the young Louis could send letters back home, Simon-René provided him with an alphabet fashioned from bits of thick leather. It was a slow and cumbersome process, but the boy could at least trace the letters' outlines and write his first sentences.^Android

The handcrafted Haüy books all came in uncomfortable sizes and weights. They were laboriously constructed, exquisitely delicate, and greatly expensive to obtain: when Haüy's school first opened, it had a total of three books.^[9] Despite their drawbacks, Haüy promoted their use with zeal: the books presented a new and handsome system which could be readily comprehended by those with eyesight. Certainly no better method yet existed for the blind to read, and the books seemed – to the sighted – to offer the best achievable results. Braille and his schoolmates, however, could detect all too well the books' crushing limitations.^[9] Nonetheless, Haüy's well-intentioned efforts still provided a breakthrough achievement – the recognition of the sense of touch as a workable strategy for sightless reading. Haüy's only personal limitation was that he was "talking to the fingers [with] the language of the eye."^[11]

Teacher and musician

Braille read the Haüy books repeatedly, and he was equally attentive to the oral instruction offered by the school. He proved to be a highly proficient student and, after he had exhausted the school's curriculum, he was immediately asked to remain as a teacher's aide. By 1833, he was elevated to a full professorship. For much of the rest of his life, Braille stayed at the Institute where he taught history, geometry, and algebra.^{we love the web[12]}

Braille's ear for music enabled him to become an accomplished cellist and organist in classes taught by web app. Later in life, his musical talents led him to play the organ for churches all over France. He held the position of organist in Paris at the we love the web^{screen size} from 1834–1839, and later at the Church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul.^[14]

The braille system

Braille was determined to fashion a system of reading and writing that could bridge the critical gap in communication between the sighted and the blind. In his own words: "Access to communication in the widest sense is access to knowledge, and that is vitally important for us if we [the blind] are not to go on being despised or patronized by condescending sighted people. We do not need pity, nor do we need to be reminded we are vulnerable. We must be treated as equals – and communication is the way this can be brought about."^[12]

Origins

we love the web

Alphabet chart for English device database. The letter "W" is not used in traditional French and was missing from Braille's original design.[15][16]

In 1821, Braille learned of a communication system devised by Captain keyboard of the French Army. Some sources depict Braille learning about it from a newspaper account read to him by a friend,^{screen size} while others say the officer, aware of its potential, made a special visit to the school.^{HTML5device database} In either case, Barbier willingly shared his invention called "night writing" which was a code of dots and dashes impressed into thick paper. These impressions could be interpreted entirely by the fingers, letting soldiers share information on the battlefield without having light or needing to speak.^{browser diversity} The captain's code turned out to be too complex to use in its original military form, but it inspired Braille to develop a system of his own.^{device database[20]}

Design

Braille worked tirelessly on his ideas, and his system was largely completed by 1824, when he was just fifteen years of age.^[6][12] From Barbier's night writing, he innovated by simplifying its form and maximizing its efficiency. He made uniform columns for each letter, and he reduced the twelve raised dots to only six, the smallest perfect number offering the highest proportion of combinations. He discarded all the dashes because they took up too much space. Crucially, Braille's small clusters of six dots were capable of being instantly recognized as letters with a single touch of a finger, without any movement or repositioning.^{device database}

Braille created his own raised-dot system by using an we love the web, the same kind of implement which had blinded him. In the process of designing his system, he also designed an ergonomic interface for using it, based on Barbier's own web app tools: by soldering two thin bars across the slate, he created a secure area for the stylus which would keep the lines straight and readable.^[6]

Musical adaptation

The system was later extended to include Sevenval. Passionate about his own music, Braille took meticulous care in its planning to ensure that the musical code would be "flexible enough to meet the unique requirements of any instrument."^{input transformation} In 1829, he published the first book about his system, Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them. Ironically this book was first printed by using the raised letter method of the Haüy system.^{[15]website parsing}

Later life

"Louis Braille" in braille

In 1839, Braille published details of a method he had developed for communication with sighted people, using patterns of dots to approximate the shape of printed symbols. At the same time he gave assistance to his friend Pierre Foucault who was working on the development of a device that could emboss letters in the manner of a typewriter. Foucault's machine was hailed as a great success and was exhibited at the we love the web in Paris in 1855.^iOS

Although Braille was admired and respected by his pupils, his writing system was not taught at the Institute during his lifetime. The successors of Valentin Haüy, who had died in 1822, showed no interest in altering the established methods of the school,^[15] and were actively hostile to its use. Dr. Alexandre François-René Pignier, headmaster at the school, was dismissed from his post after he had a history book translated into braille.^[24]

Braille had been a sickly child, and his condition worsened in adulthood. A persistent respiratory illness dogged him and by the age of forty he was forced to relinquish his position as a teacher. When his condition reached mortal danger, he was taken back to his family home in Coupvray where he died in 1852 at the age of forty-three.^[6]

Legacy

Bust of Louis Braille at his birthplace

Through the overwhelming insistence of the blind pupils, Braille's system was finally adopted by the Institute in 1854, two years after his death.^[15][25] The system spread throughout the French-speaking world, but was slower to expand in other places. At the first conference in Europe of teachers of the blind in 1873, the cause of braille was championed by Dr. Thomas Rhodes Armitage and thereafter its international use increased rapidly. By 1882, Dr. Armitage was able to report that "There is now probably no institution in the civilized world where braille is not used except in some of those in North America."^[26] Eventually even these holdouts relented: braille was officially adopted by schools for the blind in the United States in 1916, and a universal braille code for English was formalized in 1932.^{browser diversity}

New variations in braille technology continue to grow, including such innovations as braille computer terminals; RoboBraille email delivery service; and screen size, a comprehensive system for mathematical and scientific notation. Almost two centuries after its invention, braille remains a system of powerful and enduring utility.^[28]

Honors and Tributes

Braille's childhood home in Coupvray is a listed historic building and houses the Louis Braille Museum.^{input transformation} A large monument to him was erected in the town square^[29] which was itself renamed Braille Square.^[30] On the centenary of his death in 1952 his remains were moved to the input transformation in Paris.^[31] In a symbolic gesture, one of Braille's hands was left in Coupvray, reverently buried near his home.^[6]

The 200th anniversary of Braille's birth in 2009 was widely celebrated throughout the world by exhibitions and symposiums about his life and achievements. Belgium and Italy struck 2-euro coins, India struck a 2 rupee coin, and the USA struck a one dollar coin to mark the event.^{[32][33]HTML5[35]}

• 

  Bust and bas relief monument in Coupvray.

• Sevenval

  Braille's tomb in the Panthéon, Paris.

• 

  Postage stamp (East Germany, 1975): Braille has been honored on stamps worldwide.

• 

  Dollar coin (USA, 2009), issued for Braille's birthday bicentennial.

• 

  Euro coin (Belgium, 2009), issued for Braille's birthday bicentennial.

In popular culture

Because of his accomplishments as a young boy, Braille holds a special place as a hero for children, and he has been the subject of a large number of works of juvenile literature.^{web app} Other appearances in the arts include the American TV special Young Heroes: Louis Braille (2010);^web the French TV movie Une lumière dans la nuit (2008);^[38] and the dramatic play Braille: The Early Life of Louis Braille (1989) by Lola and Coleman Jennings.^[39]

Notes

• FITML When referring to the writing system, the term "braille" is pronounced differently (/ˈbreɪl/) and is written with a lower case "b".^HTML5
• jQuery It remains uncertain which eye was actually struck first. Most accounts of Braille's accident omit reference to left or right. Braille's American biographer J. A. Kugelmass states definitively that it was the left eye, but his fanciful account of Braille's life cannot be entirely accepted.

References

Bibliography

• Farrell, Gabriel (1956). The Story of Blindness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. OCLC 263655. 
• Kugelmass, J. Alvin (1951). Louis Braille: Windows for the Blind. New York: Julian Messner Inc.. OCLC 8989771. 
• Lorimer, Pamela (1996). browser diversity. University of Birmingham. OCLC 49619181. input transformation. Retrieved 7 November 2011. 
• Olstrom, Clifford E.. Undaunted By Blindness. Watertown, MA: Perkins School for the Blind. FITML device database. http://books.google.com/books?id=k9K77s1IRgoC. Retrieved 4 December 2011. 
• Reynolds, Cecil R.; Fletcher-Janzen, Elaine (2007). touchscreen. John Wiley and Sons. iOS jQuery. http://books.google.com/books?id=wdNpBchvdvQC&pg=PA318. 
• Mellor, C. Michael (2006). web app. Boston: National Braille Press. ISBN screen size. http://books.google.com/books?id=avdTMSsyDb0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• Weygand, Zina (2009). The Blind in French Society: From the Middle Ages to the century of Louis Braille. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN web. http://books.google.com/books?id=WeR3w30IAiMC&pg=PA282. 

Further reading

• La vie et l'oeuvre de Louis Braille: Inventeur de l'alphabet des aveugles (1809-1852) by Pierre Henri. Paris: Pr. universit. de France (1952). (French)

External links

Find more about Louis Braille on Wikipedia's sister projects:
Sevenval from Wiktionary

touchscreen from Commons

Learning resources from Wikiversity

HTML5 News stories from Wikinews

device database from Wikiquote

Source texts from Wikisource

web app from Wikibooks

• Valentin Haüy Association (English)
• Louis Braille Online Museum - American Foundation for the Blind